Help America's Special Needs & Autistic Infants

What is Giving Tuesday (#GivingTuesday) is a day of giving back. We practice gratefulness on Thanksgiving, find great deals at the mall on Black Friday and score great big discounts online on Cyber Monday. And now, we have a day dedicated to celebrating generosity...

Join the #GivingTuesday movement:

Give the gift of life to an Angel In Waiting:

Give thanks and show gratitude for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those who are not. Make a donation today and help our little ones in their fight for life, and do it from the hands and hearts of Nurses.

Angels In Waiting will also show our gratitude to our donors by donating our comfort penguin Sammy, to Toys for Tots boxes, In the honor of your name.

Please Spread The Word...

Share this page with friends and family and create a movement to Help Our Little Angels In Waiting Find Nurse-Foster Mommies!

Tell-A-Nurse; is Angels In Waiting’s new and innovative telemedicine platform. Our platform will help our nurses and the little angels they care for gain safer access to their Physicians, Specialist, Therapist, and Early Intervention Counselors.

The goal of Tell-A-Nurse’s telemedicine platform is to greatly help our medically fragile foster care population obtain their best possible outcome, Emotionally, Intellectuality and Physically.

Tell-A-Nurse is a HIPAA compliant telemedicine portal, that offers AIW nurses and their medically fragile foster care infants and children, a safe and convenient access into the foster child’s medical team. AIW will also continue to seek and recruit top-notch medical professionals to help our precious angels SOAR!

As the founder of Angels in Waiting, I have witnessed first-hand, how our high-risk medically fragile infants and children become exposed to life threatening illnesses, as we hyper-vigilantly sit in waiting rooms. Expecting to see the numerous physicians assigned to our “little ones” healthcare team. An acquired common cold, or a typical flu, has become a key issue for many of our high-risk medically fragile infants and children.

As a result of this growing issue, AIW’s founder created a HIPPA compliant telemedicine portal for “All” of our Angels In Waiting. Our Noble dedicated nurses and the precious souls they care for.

To clarify why creating a telemedicine portal was important... many of our little ones, are open Petri dishes due to their compromised health condition(s). Every time we Nurses-Foster Providers enter a doctor’s office or a “virulent filled microbial waiting room.” Many of our high-risk infants and children are becoming exposed to a common cold or flu-like illness that may severely impact their livelihood and may lead to death, due to their microbial exposure noted in many pediatric waiting rooms.

Under the reign of President Lyndon B Johnson, a program was created that would allow nurses to provide medically fragile foster children quality care from the comfort of their own homes. Though this program has been in existence for over 50 years, it lied dormant in every state. In 2013, Angels in Waiting resurrected this bill in the state of California, and today thousands of nurses are providing care for these medically fragile foster children through Medi-Cal.

Recently, a loving woman from the great state of Texas inquired about her ability to provide this type of loving home care in her state. Sadly we needed to inform her that this program is dormant in her state. Well, this wonderful woman decided to take it upon herself to jump through the hoops in order to ensure this program in Texas!

Lori Mendoza, working in conjunction with a state represenitive, is spearheading the Angels in Waiting bill in the Lone Star state! With AIW's knowledge and her dedication to this wonderful cause, we are so hopeful to see AIW's bill on the legislative docket this fall!

If you live in the state of Texas, please keep an eye out for AIW when it comes time to vote! With your help, so many Angels in Waiting will find loving homes to provide for them!

Angels in Waiting is excited to introduce, in partnership with LA County Department of Children and Family Services, our new Team Angel Wing program. This community awareness and outreach program is designed to work directly with major hospitals within LA County to help ensure placement of their medically fragile foster children with Independent Nurse Providers who can care for their specialized needs from home.

These children often spend weeks to months at a time in NICU and PICU wards, as their specialized care cannot be safely handled in regular foster homes or institutional care settings and group homes are full with no availability for these precious souls. Angels in Waiting ‘s new State Law gives Independent Nurse Providers priority consideration for the placement of these medically fragile infants and children. AIW’s innovative nursing program provides the needed nursing care to help this population thrive, and they do so through the loving hearts and hands of nurses, in the comfort of loving homes, receiving the special care they deserve.

Angels in Waiting has created special “gift baskets” for our medically fragile foster care population as an awareness and outreach campaign for LA hospital’s pediatric units. AIW’s “Team Angel Wing” campaign includes brochures about our nursing program, an award winning Children’s book called “The Wish”, about the plight of America’s foster children, and Sammy, our “crisis comfort penguin”. Sammy was created to help our medically fragile foster care children cope with numerous painful medical procedures and frequent placement into numerous foster homes. Not only does Sammy come with angel wings, he comes with a special pouch, in which these children can write or draw out their fears and tuck them into Sammy’s pouch for safekeeping. Indeed, AIW’s therapeutic stuffed toy was summoned to help many Newtown Connecticut children in crisis heal in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting.

With each donation Angels in Waiting receives, we can help supply Sammy’s crisis penguins and The Wish story books for these children to learn they are not alone and people do care. These children lack the safety and security that most children never have to doubt. Every little thing Angels in Waiting can do in order to help these children feel safe on their journey to finding forever homes is one small step in the right direction.

When we first met James he was four and a half years old and weighed only 28 lbs. James behaved wildly and was completely non-verbal. He could not form words and only mumbled non-coherently. It was painfully obvious how deeply he had been neglected at home.His hair had never been cut and was obstructing my ability to administer his breathing treatments. I later obtained a court order allowing him his first haircut. When we would play, he couldn’t identify the differences in shapes and colors or differentiate between letters and numbers. James never would establish eye contact with us or anyone. In his previous home, he spent so much time in a play pen that even his walking skills were underdeveloped.

Because of James’ combative behavior, the hospital wanted to ensure I could effectively care for him and required us to do seven hospital visits with James before he could come home with us. James’ anger was valid—he never had one person to focus loving and consistent attention on him. Those first weeks together required a great amount of patience, love, understanding and compassion in order for us to build trust, but slowly we became a family.

Now James is a rambunctious, Lego-loving 6-year-old and in school. He is reading independently and ahead of most of his classmates.Due to his early neglect, he struggles the most with his social skills when interacting with others. He is an active kid that loves to play and eat. Except for a few days of hospital care to treat his nine cavities, four extractions and two crowns, James has not required extended hospitalization since he has been with us. We are trying to keep his life as ‘normal’ as possible even though daily he takes about 15 medications and does three and a half hours of breathing treatments. He now walks and talks freely and makes eye contact when you engage him. When I took him back to the hospital for an appointment, the staff that used to care for him did not even recognize him.

Our dream for James’ future is for him to maintain his health well enough to eventually give back to his community. James is warm and charismatic and has the charm and personality of cuteness—he has a great heart and could do big things in this world. James has brought great love and joy into our lives and we are constantly in awe of his amazing achievements despite his struggles. James is an amazing person. We are very appreciative of Angels in Waiting’s work to bring kids like James into the homes of nurses. I know our consistent love of James combined with skilled medical care has given him the opportunity for a joyful childhood. Thank you for supporting AIW!

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